Hair lead levels in boys and girls from two Sardinian communities with different environmental backgrounds

Metal exposure and reproductive disorders in indigenous communities living along the Pilcomayo River, Bolivia

“…Several studies have shown that metal levels in hair can be used to identify situations with elevated metal exposure, provided that comparisons are made with a reference group within the same study (e.g. Pereira et al, 2004;Sanna et al, 1990;Strumylaite et al, 2004).…”

Evaluation of Association between Biomarkers of Lead Exposure in Sardinian Children (Italy)

“…The observed limitations on the use of this biomarker concern both the analytical method [25,34] and the wide variation in hair lead levels between populations and between various subpopulations (i.e., ethnic groups, age classes, sexes, and hair colors) [22,[35][36][37][38][39]. Therefore, some authors believe that the individual variations in PbH are too large to consider it a valid alternative biomarker to PbB [18,27] while others accept that there is a significant correlation (albeit with a large degree of unexplained variance) between PbB and PbH in children exposed to environmental pollution [20,22,26,[40][41][42][43][44][45]]. It appears that the level of environmental or occupational lead pollution considerably affects the strength of this correlation [26] but that the correlation is weaker when the children have low blood lead levels [26] especially when PbB values are ≤10 μg/dL [40].…”